1 Corinthians

Paul confronts the Corinthian church's factional loyalties by recentering everything on the crucified Christ, whose cross exposes the bankruptcy of human wisdom and status.

Paul works through a series of urgent pastoral problems — sexual immorality, lawsuits, marriage, idol food, and the Lord's Supper — by showing that the body of Christ, individually and corporately, is called to reflect the holiness of the God who inhabits it.

Paul redirects the Corinthians' competitive spirituality by grounding all gifts in one Spirit, inserting love as the only criterion that matters, and ordering corporate worship around the edification of the whole community.

Paul defends the bodily resurrection of the dead by anchoring it in the historically attested resurrection of Christ, showing that without the resurrection neither faith nor ethics nor the Christian mission makes any sense.